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We’ve brewed up our very first batch of BioFertilizer at Milkwood! Our carefully collected, simple ingredients are all in a big vat next to the woolshed, fermenting merrily. In two months time, we should have 200 liters of concentrated fertility, ready to dilute and spread across Milkwood’s creekflat and ridge. Fingers crossed.
A wicking bed is an excellent technique for growing things in environments where water is scarce, and has two main parts. The bottom half is a contained reservoir filled with gravel and water and the top half is filled with soil, mulch and plants. By periodic flooding of the deeper half of the bed, mature plant roots get a big drink. And because it's contained, that water gets a chance to 'wick' upwards into the soil, hydrating the soil of the bed and the smaller roots within. Pretty simple, really, but amazingly effective, very water efficient and ripe for endless variation.
Below is a photo essay outlining the process of creating a wicking bed using everyday tools and materials, which took 5 people about 4 leisurely hours to make. It features the efforts of Milkwood Permaculture's awesome Permaculture Design Certificate students in Alice Springs earlier this year, led by Nick Ritar who also designed this particular wicking bed system..
Maybe you’re already familiar with that classic Permaculture tool known as the Chicken Tractor / Chook Dome system. No? Awright – in a nutshell: In this context, a Chicken Tractor is any structure that can be moved from place to place in a garden with a bunch of chickens housed in it. The chickens living in the tractor do what chickens are so good at: scratching up the soil and turning it over, making short work of any greenstuff to be found, and spreading their manure the length and breadth of the space available to them (not to mention producing eggs and more chickens).
So – the compost pile is made…. fast forward to two weeks later… the compost is composting! Despite my well-intentioned but slightly incorrect assemblage (i really should have shredded all that glossy newsprint, or at least ripped it up into smaller pieces), my fast compost pile is hot-hot-hot! Maybe even a little too hot. Not to worry, I can cool it down by turning it more regularly. And we can only learn by doing, really…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or7WvoOVbuM]
Compost is so good, and so essential to the establishment of any system. Balcony garden, a big kitchen garden, or just the pot-plants. Surprisingly, despite being such a benchmark of any system that involved growing stuff, it can be quite daunting to make… even tho everything you need is already there, around you, begging to be transformed, with a bit of knowledge and elbow-grease, into kick-arse super-duper soil with added flavours…
As I think I’ve mentioned, this part of Australia is, although it doesn’t look it at first glance, a labyrinth of abandoned settler’s orchards. Every farm around here seems to have at least two of these gnarly fruit-thickets over in a back paddock somewheres. These old orchards are the only sign left of previous shacks and farmhouses which dotted the landscape here over a hundred years ago, during the gold-rush years.
Rightio. Making your own pickled olives is not only fun and quite easy, it’s also very satisfying on some sub-conscious level. We’ve been pickling olives since around the Copper Age (4,000 BC), so it is truly a basic human foodstuff, and one which has stood the test of time. When olives come off the tree, [...]
I am often coming across plants and trees that I don’t know the names of. Which isn’t very unusual, i know, but once you start wanting to figure out how your surrounding environment works, being able to identify what plant is growing where leads to why that plant is growing there, which quickly leads to the beginnings of an integrated understanding of one’s surroundings. Hopefully.
Self seeded fruit trees in culverts, old orchards on abandoned sites, food trees hanging over the fence into the back laneway. It’s all what is known as ‘feral fruit’ and it’s one of the best, if unheralded, community resources an area has, whether you be in an inner-city suburb or out in the middle of nowhere.
A feral fruit map is a way of mapping the resources in your area, so that come late summer and autumn, many a happy weekend can be spent finding, picking and eating/processing the bounty of your local area. Free, local food. So good….
